Not–Mr. Fairmont leaned forward hungrily, its tortured muscles rippling for a moment as though straining against an invisible bond. In the next moment it was as if that bond had snapped. The corpse erupted forward. It was not running so much as it was falling, only barely catching itself with each stride. I staggered backward, clutching at my pockets to retrieve the silver dagger with which I hoped I might defend myself. Charlie positioned himself ahead of me, holding out his open palms, still trying to assuage the horrible creature. The wet, wheezing snarls only intensified as the cadaverous figure struggled up over the raised stage and back down on our side, lurching and swaying, but pressing ever toward us.
Charlie threw off his coat. “Stand down,” he yelled at the thing, but his optimism for a peaceful resolution was clearly draining fast. He pulled his suspenders off his shoulders hastily, preparing for the inevitable. “This is your last warning.” Charlie’s face darkened as the stubble along his jaw began to spread.
With the ravenous creature almost upon him, Charlie transformed. The corpse threw itself forward and a powerful hound met the thing in midair. Charlie, in his canine form, was no scrawny stray. Imposing muscles pumped beneath a coat of tawny caramel and rich chocolate brown fur. His front paws slammed into the corpse at its sternum, whipping the disfigured figure backward like a rag doll and slapping it onto the hard ground. Fairmont’s head hung at an unnatural angle on its neck.
Charlie growled low, baring his fangs.
The corpse reached a hand up to its own head and reset its neck with a sickening crack. Charlie barked, and I sincerely hoped he had no intention of actually biting that decaying carcass. The creature that had once been Fairmont balled its pallid fingers into a fist and hammered Charlie hard on his neck. Charlie was not braced for the first blow and bore the full brunt of it. The second he was prepared for, and he caught the corpse’s arm at the elbow. His fangs sank into the sickly flesh, but the wretch barely seemed to notice. With its free hand, the thing drove a ruthless blow into Charlie’s chest, spinning the hound off him and into the grass. They both staggered to their feet.
Charlie dropped something to the ground with a heavy thump. He had taken the dead man’s arm with him. He shook his shaggy head, smacking his canine lips and looking both dazed and thoroughly disgusted.
The thing’s milky eyes refocused on me. With renewed ardor, the creature lumbered at me, its one remaining arm reaching toward me. I fumbled frantically until I had the dagger free of its sheath, and then I whipped it straight at the monster’s head.
I am not a marksman, although I had found more cause of late to practice. Contrary to my customary athletic style—which is haphazard and graceless at best—my knife spun through the air directly on target, lodging itself with a satisfying thunk squarely in the creature’s jugular. I could not have replicated the shot with a hundred more attempts if I had tried. For a fleeting moment I allowed myself a modicum of pride in my own skill. The reanimated corpse of Steven Fairmont was harder to impress.
I felt the creature’s cold, dead fingers graze my neck as I threw myself out of its grasp. Had the thing still been in possession of both arms, my maneuver would have been too late. It stumbled and spun, correcting its balance after the near miss as I tumbled out of the way and back to my feet.
Charlie was at my side in an instant, growling and bracing himself for a second encounter.
“Watch your end, Ned!” a voice said suddenly, breaking through the bushes to the creature’s left.
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve got it,” came another voice. Ned’s, I presumed.
The snarling corpse turned its head crookedly to look toward the new voices. I cursed. The coroner’s men.
“Stay back!” I yelled.
It was too late. Carrying the front end of a wooden litter, a skinny young man of no more than twenty stepped into the clearing. He froze, face-to-face with the abomination. The creature’s grotesque visage locked on his, my dagger still jutting out of its neck.
“Oi! What’s the idea?” The other man’s voice came from behind the bush, and then the gurney was shoved forward, and the terrified Ned with it.
Charlie bounded forward in an instant, but not before the corpse clutched the petrified Ned by the hair and buried its yellow teeth into the poor man’s throat.
Charlie slammed headlong into the monster, sending them both rolling across the grass until they crashed into the pillar at the head of the row. Above them, a sculpture rocked back and forth—a hefty urn overflowing with stone fruit. Charlie managed to gain the upper hand a second time, pinning the savage corpse at the base of the statue. The creature thrashed and growled, blood dripping down its chin and head, which was propped up at a sickly angle at the base of the pillar. For all its frustrated fury, it would have a more difficult time dislodging its captor with only one arm. The litter lay discarded in the grass behind them. I swallowed hard. Ned was dead.
The man who had been at the other end of the litter, a heavyset fellow in a battered longcoat, let out a scream that startled the ravens from their trees halfway across the gardens. He turned and fled, his footsteps pounding away as he put as much distance between himself and the ghastly scene as possible.
The creature gargled an inhuman moan of discontent. I watched, helplessly, as the unholy corpse pummeled Charlie’s neck and chest, driving the occasional kick up into his gut. Charlie weathered the blows valiantly, but the corpse showed no signs of tiring. It did not even seem to notice when its head cracked hard against the bricks as it struggled.
I clambered around as quickly as I could to the far side of the pillar. Bracing my feet against the dense shrubbery as best as I could, I reached high above my head and pressed against the urn on top. “Get ready to move out of the way!” I yelled. Charlie looked up for just an instant, and then let out an involuntary yelp of pain as the creature belted him across the jaw.
With great effort I could only just tilt the heavy statue an inch or so forward. It wobbled when I released it and settled right back into place. I cursed again. I had no leverage.
I heard Charlie whine piteously. Fairmont’s remaining hand had grabbed a fistful of his fur just below his ear and was shaking the hound’s head viciously. I leapt down clumsily and pulled my skirts free of the useless bush. “Hold on!” I yelled. I sprinted across the clearing and grabbed hold of the discarded litter. Trying very hard not to look at the lifeless Ned lying beside it, I dragged the wooden gurney back across the grass. Propping one end against the heavy statue, I found purchase on a cluster of marble grapes spilling merrily out of the top of the urn. Another yelp from Charlie, and I saw a tuft of chocolate brown fur tossed aside as the creature’s arm drew back for another blow.
“Now!” I screamed.
The corpse thrashed. Charlie rolled away. I heaved against my end of the litter, and the statue tipped. For a fraction of a second the urn seemed to hang in the air, weightless, and then it dropped. The head that had once been Steven Fairmont’s lay directly below it. The two met with a wet crunch.